(l-r) Professors Tajana Simunic Rosing and Rajesh Gupta with grad student ZhongYi Jin and one of the donated developer's kits from Intel

Students don't usually get access to high-end design kits that Intel typically reserves for its own developers and computer manufacturers. But the semiconductor giant has donated more than $180,000 worth of the kits to be deployed in the CSE building's new Embedded Systems lab, and Calit2's Systems on Chip lab.

The equipment will be used primarily for teaching and research about wireless, multimedia embedded systems. "It is fairly new to teach embedded systems for mobile applications such as cell phones," says computer engineering professor Rajesh Gupta. "The idea is to enhance the education of our students by moving beyond single-chip design toward complete systems embedded on a chip for mobile devices."

"This particular grant appealed to the selection committee because of the practical, problem-solving approach to the field of wireless multimedia applications," says Intel's Jerry Kissinger. "Our motivation is to jump-start relevant curriculum and research that prepares students for tomorrow's applications."